"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... replied De Chemerant, "a council will be formed; they will interrogate this rascal; if he does not answer, we shall have plenty of means to force him to it; there is more than one kind of torture." ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... far as Davy was concerned, had itself been an accident, and not (as in point of fact it was) desired and obtained by him for the purpose of insuring the testimony of experience to his principles, and in order to bind down material nature under the inquisition of reason, and force from her, as by torture, unequivocal answers to prepared and preconceived questions—yet still they would not have been talked of or described as instances of luck, but as the natural results of his admitted genius and known skill. But should an accident have disclosed similar discoveries to a mechanic at ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... said, 'I could not sleep for thinking of that light, jab-jabbing the poor fellow in his cell. Nay, it appeared to be in my own bedroom, searching for my face and challenging me, "Are you there? Ha, ha, are you there?" What an eerie torture, to a slumbering soul, in that recurrent flame from the prison darkness! The thing ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... had done a praiseworthy and necessary act. I was asking myself: "Did I do wrong or right?" They had that shut up in their hearts, just as some people carry a bullet in a closed wound. Will they not be happier now? It was too late for their torture to begin over again and early enough for them to remember ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... her and enfolded her, met in kind by the radiance of her wonderful hair, her sunny eyes, her glowing skin. The joy of the night before, the morning's passionate grief, the ingenuous hope and prayer in her ride after Steering, the sweet, anxious torture of the journey to Salome Park were all giving place to a large, impersonal comprehension of the conflict in Steering's soul. She had known before that there was trouble brewing between him and her father. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... they were not so thirsty as they really were, for no man likes to give in before a member of an inferior race; but when Yarloo went away it became harder and harder for them to keep up their pluck. For thirst is the most terrible of all forms of torture. The pain comes on slowly but surely, and increases till it seems impossible that the human body can stand any more. Yet the body is such a marvellous thing that it does stand even the terrible pain of thirst, till it gets beyond endurance and the man goes mad. The thirst which kills men in ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... up against what was harder yet to encounter than all these. Charles Barclay's was one of those natures which, being miserable, are apt to become desperate. To such men, affliction seems to be torture, but no discipline. But our humanity perceives from a level, and therefore a short-sighted point of view. We may well be thankful that the Great Ruler sees above and around and on all sides the creatures to be governed, the events to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... that the world is of evil, and that we need deliverance. It preached despisal of the world, self-denial, chastity, giving up of one's will, that is, turning away from life and its illusory pleasures. It taught the healing power of pain: an instrument of torture is the symbol of Christianity. I am quite ready to admit that this earnest, this only correct view of life was thousands of years previously spread all over Asia in other forms, as it is still, independently ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... country this is," he thought; "pleasant enough, though, as far as the climate goes; but the people in it are awful! What a lot of bloodthirsty, bilious-looking wretches, to be sure; ready to consign to torture and death a poor innocent, unprotected orphan because he happens to be of a different colour ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... said the Princess, "you need not torture yourself by trying to converse with discretion; because Mr. Neeland knows about many matters which ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... carefully controlled, so that the only change visible was a slight pallor and a graver aspect. Mrs. Loring scrutinized her countenance closely. This she bore without a sign of embarrassment. She partook but lightly of food. After the meal closed she retired to her own room, once more to torture her brain in a fruitless effort to solve this great problem of ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... discovered "what a labour it is to publish a book, and how GREEN (NEUF) an author is the first time they print him." Or it may be that Campanella turned over, with hands unstrung, and still broken by the torture, these leaves that contain his passionate sonnets. Here again is the copy of Theocritus from which some pretty page may have read aloud to charm the pagan and pontifical leisure of Leo X. This Gargantua ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... all the fine family estate behind,—pigs, poultry, and relations,—divil a tenpenny did we ever touch since. It's not your honor that will be angry to hear a few family misfortins," said Barney, hesitating to proceed with his narration, "Give me my hat, fellow," said 25I, "and don't torture me with your nonsense."— "May be it an't nonsense your honor means?" "And why not, sirrah?"—"Bekase it's not in your nature to spake light o' the dead." Up to this point, my attention had been divided between the Morning ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Sampei, she told the story of her vision, her certainty that inquiry would establish the truth of its accusation. Jinzaemon had no recourse. The Yoshiwara bugyo[u], with do[u]shin, was soon at hand. "To kill a man on such evidence...." But before applying torture he would question the victim. Chu[u]dayu's case was hopeless. The liver was almost severed. Death was but a matter of an hour or two. During that time his ravings in delirium, his confession in lucid moments, added ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... than take the loose end of the rope in your hand, and you have the persuader or bit completed. By pulling on the end which you now hold, you draw his mouth up towards his throat, and can thereby inflict the most excruciating torture that is possible for a horse to undergo, and the beauty of it is, without the least injury to the animal. One pull on this persuader is more dreaded by the horse than a whole day's flogging with raw-hide. In fact he cannot stand ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... to obtain from them, either from their good-nature, or from their not being able to tell the truth firmly, a commendation, of which he may afterwards avail himself.' JOHNSON. 'Very true, Sir. Therefore the man, who is asked by an authour, what he thinks of his work, is put to the torture, and is not obliged to speak the truth; so that what he says is not considered as his opinion; yet he has said it, and cannot retract it; and this authour, when mankind are hunting him with a cannister at his tail, can say, "I would ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... General caused, on the 16th of August, 1672, Cornelius de Witt to be arrested; and the noble brother of John de Witt had, like the vilest criminal, to undergo, in one of the apartments of the town prison, the preparatory degrees of torture, by means of which his judges expected to force from him the confession of his alleged plot against William ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... laid them aside until the next occasion when I should feel disposed for self-torture, and got out of bed. A bath and breakfast braced me up, and I left the house in a reasonably cheerful ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... kept down, and their spirits broken. We are to see them again subject to individual persecution, as anger, or malice, or any bad passion may suggest: hence the whip, the chain, the iron-collar! hence the various modes of private torture, of which so many accounts have been truly given. Nor can such horrible cruelties be discovered so as to be made punishable, while the testimony of any number of the oppressed is invalid against the oppressors, however they may be offences against the laws. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... prison with a curiosity previously denied him. One glance was sufficient. The Gray Man had come to conduct an inquisition. What more fitting place, therefore, could be found to strike terror to the hearts of the guilty or weakling than the torture ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... behind his head, staring up into the darkness, his thoughts galloping incessantly through his brain, suffering without pain as he had never imagined a human being could suffer though racked with torture from ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... see a hurricane heading towards you with its frightful force, you will undergo torture and suspense, striving to avert failure and ruin in ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... memory, even the thought, of Elizabeth, and left him a victim of its associated emotions. Bitter jealousy racked him, remorse and profound grief. The ten miles of road to the railroad became ten miles of torture, of increasing domination of the impulse to go to her, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of Dullness, blind and bold! Tyrant! more cruel than Procrustes old; Who, to his iron bed, by torture, fits, Their nobler part, the souls of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... woke in the middle of the night. He did not then regard them as an education. In some vague way he set them down as warnings, or punishments, designed to give him a taste for a better life. He felt that it was his own conscience that made these things torture him. That was his mother's idea, and he had a high respect for her moral opinions, also for her courage. Among other things, he had seen her one day defy a vicious devil of a Corsican—a common terror in the town-who ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... peerages; civil service appointments; the use of torture in India; law reform; difficulties in the execution of the treaty of Paris; the questions connected with the Isle of Serpents and Bulgrad, on the new Russo-Bessarabian frontier; the disposal of the Aland Islands ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... goe study mischief, And put a look on, arm'd with all my cunnings, Shall meet him like a Basilisque, and strike him: Love, put destroying flames into mine eyes, Into my smiles, deceits, that I may torture him, That I may make him love to ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... love!" repeated Maurice with culminating anguish. "Then you love him,—you do love him still? Answer me, Madeleine. Do not torture me by suspense! ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... was born to torture me! O what a fall, what a humiliation! Such a scheme to wreck upon so small a trifle! But ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hour. Mrs. Dudley lay very still. But for her soft breathing the little watcher at her side would have thought her dead. Many times Polly lifted herself upon her elbow, leaned over to listen, and dropped back again satisfied, but with a stifled groan. Every movement now was torture. ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... a private dressing-room meant a great deal. It was a refined torture to her to be herded among the other women, with their noise and quarrelling and coarse jokes. She found changes too. Her friend the toothless lion had succumbed to old age, several of the helpers ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... could strip myself down to the last lie—only there'd always be another one left under it!—and do penance naked in the market-place, I should at least have the relief of easing one anguish by another? Don't you see that the worst of my torture is the impossibility of ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... heart and soul? These lips are ready to smile, to utter a cry of rapture and delight, and behind the veil of my eyes lies a soul, which one touch of thine will arouse! O Frederick! Frederick! why do you torture me? Do you not know that your wife worships, loves, adores you; that you are her salvation, her god? Oh, I know these are unholy, sinful words! what then? I am a sinner! I am ready to give my soul in exchange for thee, Frederick. Why do you not hear me?—why have ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the state of inaction to which we were doomed, aggravated by the stings of mosquitoes and large green-eyed flies, became a perfect torture. ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... necessity. Providence, perhaps, has destined Bonaparte to become the tyrant who is to awaken Germany from its slumber by means of cruelties; he is, perhaps, to revive among the Germans love of honor, liberty, and country; he is, perhaps, to be the scourge that is to torture us, so that we may overcome our indolence, and that our true national spirit may be aroused. I hope the tyrant will accomplish this, and deliver Germany. God knows I would not like to serve him, but to the liberators of the world I should willingly devote my ideas and my feelings, nay, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... in the cars the shadows came over his spirits again and began to torture him with doubts and possibilities. It might be, he thought, that her sprightliness of the morning was due to fever, rather than to health. He wished he had looked into her throat, and he regretted that he had not cautioned his wife about her. He nursed ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... M'Collop as an artist has long since been established. His pictures of 'Lord Lovat in Prison,' and 'Hogarth painting him,' of the 'Blowing up of the Kirk of Field' (painted for M'Collop of M'Collop), of the 'Torture of the Covenanters,' the 'Murder of the Regent,' the 'Murder of Rizzio,' and other historical pieces, all of course from Scotch history, have established his reputation in South as well as in North Britain. No one would suppose from the gloomy character of his works that Sandy M'Collop is one ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and pinioned him. My fingers dug into his throat, and I threw him to the ground. He bared his wolf's teeth and began his death song. But I raved at him, and choked him to silence. "You are not to die now!" I shouted at his glazing eyes. "You shall live. I shall torture you. You shall live ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... he loved the mountains. Why shouldn't he? They had given him refuge when he needed it most, saving him and Boyd from dreadful torture and certain death. Somewhere in the heart of them lay the great treasure that he meant to find, and they possessed a majesty that appealed not merely to his sense of beauty, but to a spiritual feeling that was in truth ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... despair, and took the seat to which the conspirator invited him. The meal was excellent; the host not only affable, but primed with curious information. He seemed, indeed, like one who had too long endured the torture of silence, to exult in the most wholesale disclosures. The interest of what he had to tell was great; his character, besides, developed step by step; and Somerset, as the time fled, not only outgrew some of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unless it should move him to intercede with the Marquis to change the manner thereof from hanging, or simple suspension, to breaking your limbs on the roue or wheel, with the coulter of a plough, or otherwise putting you to death by torture, surpasses my comprehension. Were I you, Ranald, I would be for miskenning Sir Duncan, keeping my own secret, and departing quietly by suffocation, like your ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... and drew his revolver. The bullet would do quickly what the cold would accomplish after lingering hours of torture, yet, facing those pricking ears and the brave trust of the eyes, he was blinded by a mist and could not aim. He had to place the muzzle of the gun against the roan's temple and pull the trigger. When he turned ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... Why had these men formed this plot against me? What had I done to merit such deadly vengeance as this?—a torture of the Middle Ages! ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... His revealed Nature are things, which, though not opposed to Reason, are infinitely strange to the Imagination; as in His works we can neither reject nor admit the ideas of space, and of time, and the necessary properties of lines, without intellectual distress, or even torture; really, Gentlemen, I am making no outrageous request, when, in the name of a University, I ask religious writers, jurists, economists, physiologists, chemists, geologists, and historians, to go on quietly, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... slightly, but she kept her eyes steadily fixed on her companion's face. She began to understand where the point of the torture was ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... between life and death was protracted by the confusion; and the miserable Caneri suffered the additional torture of hearing for some time the appalling heralds of his fate, before the blow was struck. The door burst open, and the savage eyes of his enemies glared upon their victim, and the glitter of their weapons struck fearfully ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Independence, in which we have the satisfaction of assuring ourselves that the fathers of our liberty had two legs apiece, and crossed them in concert with the utmost regularity. One might think, at first, that these narrow boots were as uncomfortable to the calesero as the Scottish instrument of torture of that name; but his little swagger when he is down, and his freedom in kicking when he is up, show that he has ample ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... show too soft a spirit.' The skilful poet knows that habit is a good teacher how to bear pain. And so Ulysses, though in extreme agony, still keeps command over his words. 'Stop! hold, I say! the ulcer has got the better of me. Strip off my clothes. O, woe is me! I am in torture.' Here he begins to give way; but in a moment he stops—'Cover me; depart, now leave me in peace; for by handling me and jolting me you increase the cruel pain.' Do you observe how it is not the cessation of bodily anguish, but the necessity of chastening ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the candle, leaving a long wick to smolder and fill the room with its evil odor, and threw herself on her bed; there she bit the pillow, and tore at it with her teeth while she brooded over the torture she had to endure. Sleep only came to her after she had heard a door shut—the door of the lonely chamber of the master; then she was ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Holman, nerved somewhat by the thought that the trail he passed over would carry me. The dangers were hidden by the darkness, and my imagination was too stunned by the happenings of the night to make any endeavour to torture my nerves by ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... kind of cruelty. But there is nothing in the least barbaric or ignorant about intellectual cruelty. The great Renaissance artists who mixed colours exquisitely mixed poisons equally exquisitely; the great Renaissance princes who designed instruments of music also designed instruments of torture. Barbarity, malignity, the desire to hurt men, are the evil things generated in atmospheres of intense reality when great nations or great causes are at war. We may, perhaps, be glad that we have not got them: but it is somewhat dangerous to be proud that we have not ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... shuddered as I reflected on what was before them. They were to endure thirst in all its gradations—from the simple, scarce painful longing for water—which most of them already felt—to the extremest agony and torture which that appetite can inflict. But a few days before, I had myself experienced thirst; but what signified that compared to what they would be compelled to endure? Simply nothing—a mere foretaste, that enabled me to judge how terribly painful thirst ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... little real value for art. Like all descriptions of moments of extremity, of agonies, of death rattles, of contractions of the muscles where all elasticity is lost, where the nerves, ceasing to be the organs of the human will, reduce man to a passive victim of despair; they only serve to torture the soul. Deplorable visions, which the artist should admit with extreme circumspection within the graceful circle of ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... again he examined the broken foreleg more carefully. Gentle as was his touch, yet Link knew it must cause infinite torture. But the dog did not flinch. He seemed to understand that Ferris meant kindly, for he moved his magnificent head far enough to lick the man's hand softly ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... from the darkness, but I have no one to take care of me from the light.—As I was telling you, I lay dying in the sun. All at once I drew a deep breath. A cool wind came and ran over my face. I looked up. The torture was gone, for the death-lamp itself was gone. I hope he does not die and grow brighter yet. My terrible headache was all gone, and my sight was come back. I felt as if I were new made. But I did not get up at once, for I was tired still. The grass grew cool ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... indecision. Oh, I know all about it." His hand moved a little upon her shoulder; it almost seemed to caress her. "I haven't studied human nature all these years for nothing. I know you're in a perfect fever of doubt, and it'll go on till you're married. What's the good of it? Why torture yourself like this when the way to happiness lies straight before you? Are you hoping against hope that something may yet turn up to prevent our marriage? Would you be happy if it ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... zancudos gritones los parece cria la naturaleza para castigo y tormento de los hombres." "Those mosquitos which are called buzzing zancudos, Nature seems to have created for the especial punishment and torture of man." Fray Pedro Simon.) These strange punishments have not always been confined to the lay-brothers. There happened in 1788 one of those monastic revolutions, of which it is difficult to form a conception ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... you sir, I hardly know you any longer. May I die before your eyes, if you do not encourage this malicious, unfeeling wretch. In spite of gallows, axe, and torture I could... yes, I could have throttled him with these hands, and torn him to pieces ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... indispensable. The old Dutch law condemned criminals to a diet of unsalted food, the effects being said to be those of the severest physical torture. Years ago an experiment tried near Paris demonstrated the necessity of its use. A number of cattle were fed without the ration of salt; an equal number received it regularly. At the end of a specified time, the unsalted ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... of course all been pulled down) was a crime punishable with death; and any Huguenot caught whilst attempting to escape from the country was sent to the galleys—a fate worse than mere death, for it meant death by slow torture. And every child was forcibly taken from its heretic parents at the age of five, and ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... not having taken the left-hand road in life instead of the right are our chief mental resources after forty, and they tell me that we men only know half the poignancy of these miserable recollections. Women have a special adaptiveness for this kind of torture—would seem ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... brush and briers had been annoying and hurtful, and the roughness of the way very trying. Now the one was wounding and cruel; the other made every step with his jaded limbs a torture. With the low spirits engendered by the great fatigue, came a return of the old fears and tremors. The continual wails of the wildcats roundabout filled him with gloomy forebodings. Every hair of his head stood stiffly up in mortal ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... consists in a total departure from the use and wont of his time, in respect of the nature of the studies to be pursued and the order in which they should be taken. There was to be an end of that wretched torture of Latin and Greek theme-making and versifying, and that dreary toiling amid obsolete subtleties of scholastic Logic and Metaphysics, which he had denounced in a previous passage, and which had made University Education, he says, nothing better than "an asinine ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... another. All this evil flows directly from the Christian morality which teaches that all hopes, efforts, and aims should be turned towards laying up treasures in heaven, where also the heart should be. One need scarcely add a word of reprobation as to the horrible doctrine of eternal torture, although that, too, is part of the teaching of Christ. The whole conscience of civilised mankind is so turning against that shameful and cruel dogma, that it is only now believed among the illiterate and uncultured ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... to your friend. Comfort her. The poor girl is no more guilty than if a traction engine had run over her or a wild beast had broken on her out of his cage. She must not torture herself any longer. It is not right, it is not good. Our body is not the only part of use that is subject to diseases, and you must save her from a disease ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... aristocrats of Paris, were toned down to the quality of tempered steel. With not a spare ounce of flesh on them—the rations of the French army are not as rich as ours—and tested by long marches down dusty roads, by incessant fighting in retreat against overwhelming odds, by the moral torture of those rearguard actions, and by their first experience of indescribable horrors, among dead and dying comrades, they had a beauty of manhood which I found sublime. They were bronzed and dirty and hairy, but ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... always been accustomed to torture himself in various ingenious ways, nearly always connected with sex. He would burn his skin deeply with red hot wire in inconspicuous places. These and similar acts were generally followed by manual excitation nearly always ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... desperations From such have risen! But yet remaining, What is't but chaining Hearts which, once waning, Beat 'gainst their prison? Time can but cloy love, And use destroy love: The winged boy, Love, Is but for boys— You'll find it torture Though sharper, shorter, To wean and not ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... emaciated by fasting nor weakened by penance. Anticipating the glory of extirpating heresy, he is feeling the sharp edge of an axe, to be employed in the decollation of the enemies to the true faith. A sledge is laden with whips, wheels, ropes, chains, gibbets, and other inquisitorial engines of torture, which are admirably calculated for the propagation of a religion that was established in meekness and mercy, and inculcates universal charity and forbearance. On the same sledge is an image of St. Anthony, accompanied by his pig, and the plan ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... bajan lies upon a table, undergoing the planing of his tusks, "while a saw lies upon the ground, suggestive of the actual de-horning of the beast. The work itself and later apologies for the institution mention among the instruments of torture a comb and scissors for cutting the victim's hair, an auriscalpium for his ears, a knife for cutting his nails; while the ceremony further appears to include the adornment of the youth's chin with a beard by means of burned cork ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... ego of yours in negro-hatred, whilom chief magistrate and disgrace of that unfortunate city. But under your life-service regime things are managed in a more enlightened way. There they who have liberty—and sometimes use the liberty—to torture women into beastly submissions, do not hide from the laws, they make the laws. There such a personage as the one mentioned may be a gentleman, a man of high standing," one of the most respectable men in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... sleep for a couple of hours, but at daybreak had turned out again to start upon the plastering and work at it doggedly, with no more sustenance than a dry biscuit. It had all been one long-drawn physical torture; and the grey plaster smeared on his face showed ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... church and put into the pastoral charge over his subjects one who, under his travestied name of Megapolensis, has obtained a good report as a faithful minister of Jesus Christ. It was he who saved Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary, from imminent torture and death among the Mohawks, and befriended him, and saw him safely off for Europe. This is one honorable instance, out of not a few, of personal respect and kindness shown to members of the Roman ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... English into disgrace. Their warehouses at Surat were seized, and the president and factors were placed in irons, in which condition they remained seven months. This grievance was the greater, as it happened at the time that the cruel torture and execution of Captain Towerson and his crew by the Dutch took place at Amboyna. It was bad enough to be made responsible for the doings of their own countrymen, but to be punished for the misdeeds of their enemies was a bitter pill to swallow. In 1630, just as peace was being concluded with France ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... I am very glad of it, ile plague him, ile torture him, I am glad of it, Tub. One of them shewed me a ring that hee had of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then took they those men that they thought had any property ... and put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with unutterable torture; for never were martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke; they hanged them by the thumbs or by the head and hung armour on their feet; they put knotted strings about their heads and writhed them so that they went into ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... overhanging bough, which alone saves her from the black destruction beneath. Unable to conquer the opposition he encountered here, Belmont went West, and finally strayed into the solitudes of Oregon and British America. At one time, for a year, I did not know whether he were living or dead, and what torture I silently endured! Six months ago he returned, buoyed by the hope of retrieving his past; and one of his pictures was bought by a wealthy man in Philadelphia, who had commissioned him to paint two more landscapes. At last we began to dream of an humble little home somewhere, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... him from many tortures which he must have suffered in company with his fellow-prisoners, whole nails they tore out, also cutting off their fingers, and burning them in several places. They put to death on the same day two or three, and, in order to increase their torture, treated them in the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... We contrived, after infinite torture, to put on our boots again, and then walked up the hill to the village-like town. Besides the church of mixed Romanesque and Gothic, there was nothing worth seeing there, unless the spectacle of a woman ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... valiant Stranger, haste away, Lest you become the Giant's prey. On his return he'll bring another Still more savage than his brother;— A horrid, cruel monster, who, Before he kills, will torture you. Oh, valiant Stranger! haste away, Or you'll become these ...
— The Story of Jack and the Giants • Anonymous
... unstrung. It seemed, even with, his eyes closed, that he could feel the weight of the cone of light upon his face. The desire to escape from its searching glare became well-nigh irresistible. How long would this torture continue? He began to feel intensely tired and worn out and realized that could he but shut out the blinding brilliancy which enveloped him, he would sink exhausted to sleep. Sleep! He could no more sleep, under the present conditions, ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... confess nothing. In those days it was customary to extort confessions from prisoners, by means of torture, a mode long since abolished in this country; but the king and his ministers did not wish to render themselve obnoxious to the Romanists by resorting to the rack. Instead, therefore, of using torture, they ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... crusade. We cannot stop to describe these courts, which became especially notorious in Spain some two centuries after their establishment. The unfairness of the trials and the cruel treatment to which those suspected of heresy were subjected, through long imprisonment or torture—inflicted with the hope of forcing them to confess their crime or implicate others—have rendered the name of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... he continued in a lower tone, "what's the talk in the Capitol, that at Rome they are proceeding on a new plan against the Christians with great success. They don't put to death, at least at once; they keep in prison, and threaten the torture. It's surprising how ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... in the streets of the imperial city. It has very low wheels, a heavy, awkward body, and is as noisy as a hard-running Concord coach. Some one describes it as being a cross between a cab and an instrument of torture. There is no rest for the occupant's back; and while the seat is more than large enough for one, it is not large enough for two persons. It is a sort of sledge on wheels. The noise made by these low-running conveyances as they are hurried ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... state in which it spares bodily torture to the worst criminals, and having agreed, if criminals be put to death at all, to kill them in the speediest way, I consider the question with reference to society, and not at all with reference to the criminal, holding that, in a case of cruel and deliberate murder, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... cruelty frequently occurs. At Aerschot "women had to witness the sight of the conflagration holding their hands up. Their torture lasted six hours." At Crevic, the Germans began their sinister work by burning a chateau which they knew belonged to General Lyautey. The troops, commanded by an officer, shouted out for Madame and Mademoiselle Lyautey "that they might cut their ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... his life, is a Muni even though he may lead a domestic life. Such a man is purged of all his sins. Fasts and other penances cannot destroy sins, however much they may weaken and dry up the body that is made of flesh and blood. The man whose heart is without holiness, suffers torture only by undergoing penances in ignorance of their meaning. He is never freed from sins of such acts. The fire he worshippeth doth not consume his sins. It is in consequence of holiness and virtue alone ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... don't understand." Piteously she turned and clasped his arm in desperate entreaty. "I shall lie awake in torture. I shall hear him calling all night long. He is there beyond the mountains, wanting me. And I can't get to him. It is agony—oh, it is agony—to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... constitution, sometimes associating ideas of pleasure and enjoyment with those of blood and destruction; as, for example, it happened in the games of the circus under the Roman emperors; nay, some have even looked upon homicide and torture as religious duties, and a part of the worship due to the Divine Being! Fanaticism naturally engenders that sacrilegious alliance, and man, under its irresistible influence, becomes more frightful in his hatred, more cruel in his hostilities, than ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... see if I have this straight. You want me to take this ship to earth and swipe you a high dragon bump. And you're going to keep Sheilah here and torture her if I don't deliver ...
— High Dragon Bump • Don Thompson
... a prison be not enough for you, I will teach you a lesson in the art of torture which I learned from our chaplain, or one of his substitutes.—'Make your cells round and smooth; let there be no prominent point for the eye to rest upon, so that it must necessarily turn inward, and I will warrant that you will soon have the pleasure of seeing your victim frantic.' Look well to ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and life, surrounds them with glory of affectionate service, and festivity of pure human beauty. Superstition contemplates its idols as lords of death, appeases them with blood, and vows itself to them in torture and solitude. Religion proselytes by love, superstition by war; religion teaches by example, superstition by persecution. Religion gave granite shrine to the Egyptian, golden temple to the Jew, sculptured corridor to the Greek, pillared aisle and frescoed wall to the Christian. Superstition ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... she cried, "I have done everything I can, and all for you; all for you. I cannot stand any more. This is torture to me. Let me go home, and another day when I am calmer I will ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... hears it said that the cruelty of the Indians was not greater than that of mediaeval Europeans, as exemplified in judicial torture and in the horrors of the Inquisition. But in such a judgment there is lack of due discrimination. In the practice of torture by civil and ecclesiastical tribunals in the Middle Ages, there was a definite moral ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... a thousand times, no!" Don Carlos cried. "I was desolated when you refused to dance with me last night, and you put me to the torture later in the conservatory. I wanted to murder the other man, the one in particular on ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... wish me to keep her for ever in my service, for her to torture my ears incessantly, to infringe all the laws of custom and reason, by a barbarous accumulation of errors of speech, and of garbled expressions tacked together with proverbs dragged out of the ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... was marked by open folly and vanity. Desirous of some token of appreciation from Mary for his services, he entered into a long correspondence with her, which was intercepted by the spies of Walsingham. On the 4th of August Ballard was seized and betrayed his comrades, probably under torture. Babington then applied for a passport abroad, for the ostensible purpose of spying upon the refugees, but in reality to organize the foreign expedition and secure his own safety. The passport being ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... English nation has authorized, by a tacit consent, an almost general mitigation of such part of those judgments as savours of torture and cruelty: a sledge or hurdle being usually allowed to such traitors as are condemned to be drawn; and there being very few instances (and those accidental or by negligence) of any persons being embowelled or burned, till previously deprived ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... hope and doubt and torture, seemed mercifully unreal now, they lay so far back in the past—six or eight years, in fact, which is a lifetime to the lad of twenty—and meantime he had conquered many of the adverse circumstances that had threatened to cloud ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was precious, he continued to read the diary till he came to an entry which excited his deep interest: "Poor Allan Garland was captured to-day by the Yankees; and I suppose they will torture and starve the poor fellow, as they have the rest of our boys who have fallen into their hands. We shall never meet again. He was a good fellow. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... themselves down from the rock; aye, time has been when whole cities came utterly to an end: while for the sake of Freedom that is true, and sure, and unassailable, dost thou grudge to God what He gave, when He claims it? Wilt thou not study, as Plato saith, to endure, not death alone, but torture, exile, stripes—in a word, to render up all that is not thine own? Else thou wilt be a slave amid slaves, wert thou ten thousand times a consul; aye, not a whit the less, though thou climb the Palace steps. And thou shalt know how true the saying of Cleanthes, that though the words ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... burned to ashes by this time, and, best of all, "that pig of a sergeant," as Moreno called him, that hound and murderer, Feeny,—he who had slain Ramon,—bound, gagged, and left to miserable death by torture. Indeed, as he was jolted along in the ambulance, groaning and cursing by turns, Pasqual wondered why he had not insisted that Harvey, too, should be given the coup de grace before their start. It was an unpardonable ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... orders of the Afridi who is now dead. They made ready to torture me, showing me the knives they would use. But she came, and they obeyed her, binding the Afridi fast to me. After that I heard the sahib's voice, and then this happened. That ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... her ankle to her knee, and when she tried to take another step she found the darting agony returned. But stop she could not. Her face grew gray and lined with misery as she dragged forward, saving her injured ankle as much as she could, but always having to torture it intolerably with every onward limp. Her persecutor caught up with her promptly, and she cast beseeching looks for deliverance on every side, which the hurrying, preoccupied crowd was too intent on its own affairs to see. If only she could see a policeman! ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... any subject whatever, outside of the restricted circle of his functions, would have been for him in any case useless and a fatigue; thought on the day which had just passed was a torture. Nevertheless, it was indispensable that he should take a look into his conscience, after such shocks, and render to himself ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... but when the people of Pherae came to lament over him, Pelopidas bade them be of good courage, as now if ever the tyrant would have to pay the penalty of his crimes: and he sent a message to the tyrant himself, saving that he was a strange man, to torture and murder his wretched and innocent citizens every day, and to spare him, who he knew would be sure to wreak vengeance on him if he should escape. The tyrant, admiring his spirit and fearlessness, said, "What! does Pelopidas wish to die?" The other, hearing of this ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... from GREECE, but accounts of the depredations of the robbers which now infest all parts of the country. In the provinces of Acarnania, Levadia and Attica, several villages have been sacked, and the inhabitants put to the torture. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... inclination; he gives her folly motion and advantage: and now she's going to my wife, and Falstaff's boy 30 with her. A man may hear this shower sing in the wind. And Falstaff's boy with her! Good plots, they are laid; and our revolted wives share damnation together. Well; I will take him, then torture my wife, pluck the borrowed veil of modesty from the so seeming Mistress Page, divulge 35 Page himself for a secure and wilful Actaeon; and to these violent proceedings all my neighbours shall cry aim. [Clock heard.] The clock gives me my cue, and my assurance bids me ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... sit opposite to her while she ate and drank, see her, perhaps, with her hair in curl-papers, know possibly that she had a corn upon her foot, hear her speak maybe of a decayed tooth, or of a chilblain, would have been torture to me. Into such abyss of the commonplace there was no fear of my dragging her, and for this I was glad. In the future she would be yet more removed from me. She was older than I was; she must be now a ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... bubbles up in him. I know something of it myself, for when I was a child I sometimes had fits of angry passion which left me exhausted on the floor, and even now, when the gusts arise within me, I have to fight against myself and torture myself in order that I may not act madly. But my poor Dario does not know how to suffer. He is like a child whose fancies must be gratified. And yet at bottom he has a good deal of common sense; he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... my enemies can, and I believe will, capture me and throw me into prison. They will scarcely take my life, for to do so would excite a storm of indignation; but I always carry poison about with me and, if they applied torture as a preliminary to death, I have the power of releasing myself from ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... you. I would chastise you, with all my years upon me, in spite of my white head. Yours, if this boy should die, will never become white, or will become so suddenly, as your soul will wither, with its own self-torture, within you. Begone!—keep back—do not approach me, and, above all, do not approach me with uplifted hand, or, by Heaven, I will fell you to the earth as surely as you felled this boy! You have roused a feeling ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... we owe God for our redemption, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. For each of us Jesus suffered hunger and thirst, the temptation in the wilderness, the agony in the Garden, the cruel torture of the Cross. Do we think lightly of our sins? They were heavy enough to drive those piercing nails through the Hands and Feet of Jesus. Do we speak lightly of our sins? They were heavy enough to force that bitter cry from Jesus, "My God, My God, why hast ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... it certainly brought a flood of bitter ridicule on the unfortunate Minister. In addition to this, there was published, on the clever initiation of Henry Mayhew, the sheet of "Anti-Graham Wafers"—an instrument of diabolical torture for the unhappy Secretary, who already figured as "Paul Pry" in half a hundred of the more important papers. In this sheet, 10 inches by 7-3/4 inches in size, drawn by H. G. Hine, there were printed sixteen wafers, in ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... like that;" and then was silent again. What was there he could say?—he was in no mood for sympathy. The touch of Fern's soft arms, her little attempt at consolation, were torture to him. His idol was gone in another man's possession. He should never see again the dark southern loveliness that had so inthralled his imagination; and the idea ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... fight, in which the rescuer was greatly outmatched in strength, the cowardly ruffians were put to flight. That little ragamuffin was no less a personage than the King of England, and the curious circumstance by which he got into those rags and into that cruel torture is told by Mark Twain, in his most interesting story-book, ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... all the majesty of the English Navy, all the law, all the noble polity of England, arrayed to judge a boy to death, for a five minutes' prank. They would drag me on a hurdle to Tyburn, as soon as torture had made ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... may find rest, or even so much as live. I am driven hither and yon, a fugitive and a vagabond, even as the accursed Cain (Gen. iv, 14). I have already said that "without were fightings, within were fears" (II Cor. vii, 5), and these torture me ceaselessly, the fears being indeed without as well as within, and the fightings wheresoever there are fears. Nay, the persecution carried on by my sons rages against me more perilously and continuously than that of my open enemies, for my sons ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... too soon do we forget. And yet, when we were new-born we did remember other times and places. We, helpless infants in arms or creeping quadruped-like on the floor, dreamed our dreams of air-flight. Yes; and we endured the torment and torture of nightmare fears of dim and monstrous things. We new-born infants, without experience, were born with fear, with memory of ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... next day the familiars appeared, and led me to the hall of judgment, where I was asked whether I confessed my crime. I replied that I did not know what I was accused of. They again asked me if I would confess, and on my making the same answer I was ordered to the torture. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Church, on the Baltimore turnpike, about four miles from Gettysburg, and reached there after dark. They had sixty wounded undergoing every variety of suffering and torture. The church was small, having but one aisle, and the narrow seats were fixtures. A small building adjoining provided boards which were laid on the tops of the seats, and covered with straw, and on these ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... of the true Morito," said the chief. "Their young men are initiated by torture. That is one mark. Then their chief men wear feathers on their heads. That is the second. And the third mark is that they are tattooed, as I am," and he pointed to the strange figures on his naked chest; "and ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... is no putting up with that!" So saying, he sprang up and made off through the gate of the city, hardly believing in his escape. Quoth the King, "I excuse her, and in my son's hands be her doom. If he will, let him torture her, and if he will, let him kill her." Quoth the Prince, "Pardon is better than vengeance and mercy is of the quality of the noble;" and the King repeated, "'Tis for thee to decide, O my son." So the Prince set her free, saying, "Depart from our neighbourhood and Alla pardon ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... was a well-trained debater before he entered the House, and at once took a prominent position in its deliberations. He illustrated the virtue of persistence in its highest degree, and had the art of annoying his opponent in discussion to the point of torture.—John Beatty of Ohio, who had served a brief period in the preceding Congress, now appeared for a full term. He had an excellent record as a soldier, was a successful man of affairs, and was endowed with a firmness ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... deal of shuddering undergraduate life flitting about the place—luckless youths, in white ties and bands, who are undergoing the peine forte et dure with different degrees of composure; and their friends who are there to look after them. You may go in and watch the torture yourself if you are so minded, for the viva voce schools are open to the public. But one such experiment will be enough for you, unless you are very hard-hearted. The sight of the long table, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... profusion! at how dear a rate Are we made up! all hope of thrift and state Lost for a verse. When I by thoughts look back Into the womb of time, and see the rack Stand useless there, until we are produc'd Unto the torture, and our souls infus'd To learn afflictions, I begin to doubt That as some tyrants use from their chain'd rout Of slaves to pick out one whom for their sport They keep afflicted by some ling'ring art; ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... her body with rude disciplines, and one cannot describe without a sensation of horror, the cap, bristling with sharp points, that she wore secretly on, her head night and day. The Sisters once accidentally saw this instrument of torture, and begged her to discontinue its use, but she smilingly told them, it caused her no more pain than a ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... 'tisn't true! 'tisn't true!' cried Cytherea in an agony of torture. 'He has never loved anybody else, I know—I ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... forget not, neither will I keep silence regarding the severity of Thy scourge and the wondrous swiftness of Thy mercy. Thou didst torture me with toothache; and when the pain had become so great that I could not even speak, it came into my mind to tell all my friends who were there to pray to Thee for me, to Thee the God of all manner of succour. And I wrote my request on a wax tablet and I gave it them ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... founded, and convert what was intended as an asylum for repentant vice, not into a house merely of salutary correction, which may moderate with reviving morality and cease entirely with complete reformation, but into a prison of endless torture, where though the sufferings of the body may terminate, the worst species of torture, the endurements and mortifications of the soul, are to end only with existence? Shall a vile faction be allowed to inflict on the unfortunate convict a punishment ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... thought she must have made sunshine where ever she went, was the skeleton, or the misery, or the bore, or the Nemesis of Clavering House, and of most of the inhabitants thereof. As one little stone in your own shoe or your horse's, suffices to put either to torture and to make your journey miserable, so in life a little obstacle is sufficient to obstruct your entire progress, and subject you to endless annoyance and disquiet. Who would have guessed that such a smiling little fairy as Blanche ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... think,' she said with a half laugh, 'that I was an inquisitor, and that you were answering under torture!' ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... share of fanatical sects, some of whom push their religion to a wonderful extreme. One sect has a way of sacrificing children by a sort of slow torture in no way commendable. Another sect makes a burnt offering of some of its adherents, who are selected by lot. They enter a house prepared for the occasion, and begin a service of singing and prayer. After a time spent in devotions, the building is set on fire and consumed with ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... letters—by the simple and peremptory preaching of the Evangel. He recognised it as a case calling for sympathy, and he does not find the sympathy hard. Knox, indeed, like the other Reformers, had parted for ever with the mediaeval idea of salvation by self-torture—even by self-torture for sin. Like all the wisest of the human race, too—even before Christianity came to sanction their surmise—he held that religion must be an objective thing, and that salvation lies in dealing, not with ourselves, but with One outside of us and above. Yet ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... his own agony. Heaven only knows how bitterly this hard man may have felt the separation between himself and his only son, or how much the more terrible the anguish might have been made by that unflinching self-conceit which concealed the torture. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... not worse folly to torture a poor girl as you do me — all for a worthless ring? What can you want with the ring? I do not know that he ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the Reformation set us free. The minister has no longer power to press into the retirements of conscience, to torture us by interrogatories, or put himself in possession of our secrets and our lives. But though we have thus controlled his usurpations, his just and original power remains unimpaired. He may still see, though he may not pry: he may yet hear, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... death an opportunity of gratifying the unnatural hatred which she had long felt for her son Cluentius. She would accuse him of poisoning his step-father. Her first attempt failed completely. She subjected three slaves to torture, one of them her own, another belonged to the younger Oppianicus, a third the property of the physician who had attended the deceased in his last illness. But the cruelties and tortures extorted no confession from the men. At ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... many causes of the army's disruption was its losses in prisoners. Not less than 5,000 men were at that moment dying by slow torture in the foul prisons or pestilential floating dungeons of New York. Turn from it as we may, there is no escaping the conviction that if not done with the actual sanction of Sir William Howe, these atrocities were at least committed with his guilty knowledge.[1] The calculated barbarities practised ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... voice of Harrington. A criminal on the scafford with the noose about his neck and the trap sagging underneath his feet could not have welcomed a pardon more eagerly than I welcomed my deliverance out of this torture-chamber. ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... Sannyasin. The life of wandering during eight months and the rest during the rainy season agree exactly; and in many other points, for example in the use of confession, they agree with the Buddhists. They agree with Brahma[n.]s alone in ascetic self-torture, which Buddhism rejects; and specially characteristic is the fact that ancient Brahmanism recommends starvation to its penitents as beneficial. [Footnote: An example may be found in Jacobi's careful comparison of the customs of the Brahmanic and Jaina ascetics, in the beginning of his translation ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... but just left the last remnants of his candle-ends burning, and climbed glowing to his room, delighted with the success of his experiment, when those quick-following, hideous sounds rent the night, like flashes from some cloud of hellish torture. His heart seemed to stand still. Without knowing why, involuntarily he associated them with what he had been last about, and for a moment felt like a murderer. The next he caught up his light, and rushed from the room, to seek, like his father, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... from your lips, curse you!" cried Wilde, furiously. "I will torture you here, starve you here, until you go mad ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... yet always envying their felicity. They would have it, because it is easy and comfortable; yet cannot abide to think of it, because they have lost it for ever. Ever laden with the delight of sin; and yet that is the greatest torture; always desiring to put it out of their mind, and yet assuredly know they must for ever abide ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... it most. When a man is under the shadow of a bereavement, he can test for himself how he has used love. If he finds that the loving looks and words and caresses of those that are left to him are a mere torture to him, then he has used love wrongly, just as a selfish and agreeable delight; but if he finds strength and comfort in the yearning sympathy of friend and beloved, reassurance in the strength of the love that is left him, and confidence in the indestructibility of affection, then he ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... soft collision; but the owner of those eyes did not hear the words that earned him that torture. He lay still ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... from downcast eyes, And when they turned their heads; And when their garments clung to them, Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies. Their spirits watched my ecstasy With wide looks of starry unconcern. Their spirits looked upon my torture; They drank it as it were the water of life; With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes, The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight. And they cried to me for life, life, life. But in taking life for myself, In seizing and crushing ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... of my generals arose and said: 'We can change some of our tactics without loss to our cause. The sword and torture only strengthen our enemies. We should resort more to the ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... Devils Laws in a Spectral Book laid before them; which two or three of these poor Sufferers, being by their tiresome sufferings overcome to do, they have immediately been released from all their miseries and they appear'd in Spectre then to Torture those that were before their Fellow-Sufferers. The Witches which by their covenant with the Devil, are become Owners of Spectres, are oftentimes by their own Spectres required and compelled to give their consent, for the molestation of ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... think you are in peril, too. O, Simon Fraser! to think upon that man! For his life and the dirty money, to be dealing in such traffic!" And just then she called out aloud with a queer word that was common with her, and belongs, I believe, to her own language. "My torture!" says she, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... put on a look of pain, and walk hastily from the room, as if the torture to my ears ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... sheep; but there was something beside that moved his heart to pity. It was the lurking sadness of a man deep hurt, who fights the whole world in his anguish; the protest of a soul in torment, demanding, like Job, that some one shall justify his torture. ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... rubbers in unpleasant bubbles until it seemed to her as if she must kill herself. Hot air coming out from a steam laundry. Hot, stifling air. Bernice didn't work in the laundry but she wished that she did so that the hot air would kill her. She wanted to be stifled. She needed torture to be happy. She also needed a good swift clout on ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... whose breast the sources of life are frozen. I chatted—I who never chatted—with women, and with men. I even smiled—once. That was when my little white-faced wife asked me if it were not time to go home. Even a man under torture might find strength to smile if the inquisitor should ask if he were not ready to ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... of Flora. Oh, speak to me of Flora, if you would not have me die at once of suspense, and all the torture ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest |
